Interview with Nestor Sander
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Author: Aramco ExPats Staff
Released 5 February 2010
In 2001, Nestor J. Sander published a biography of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the founding king of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Last year, Selwa Press published a paperback version of Ibn Saud: King by Conquest.
Nestor Sander Nestor, fondly known as "Sandy" to many in the Aramco community, first arrived in Saudi Arabia in late 1938 at the age of 24. Educated as a geologist, what inspired him to write a biography of a military and political leader?
In the Introduction of King by Conquest, Nestor recounts:
On 1 May 1939, after dinner with him in the new mess hall, I gripped briefly the scarred, long-fingered, sinewy hand of the first king of Saudi Arabia: Abdul Aziz ibn Abdur Rahman ibn Faisal ibn Turki as Saud. To him it was a gesture of goodwill toward us Americans who had found oil in his land; to me it was a moment of deep respect tinged with deference. [...] Towering over my six feet, he was every inch the sovereign in dignity and commanding presence. At the moment jovial, he smiled at me, but the furrows on his leathery tan face attested that for forty of his sixty-two years he waged war and exercised masterly diplomacy to establish and to safeguard his kingdom.
The face-to-face encounter left a lasting impression on Nestor, who devoured all the books and documents he could find that covered the life of Saudi Arabia’s first king.
Nestor goes on to recognize that "no completely objective account of Ibn Saud's career or his person exists." With this biography, Nestor attempted to reconcile the various accounts of modern Saudi Arabia's first king.
"My purpose was to give a tripartite view of Ibn Saud without prejudices and a minimum of interpretation," elaborated Nestor, in an email interview. "The first chapters of the book recount his career as a warrior and nascent statesman. The second part discusses the Saudi state (its financial difficulties, the organization of the government and its personnel, the granting of concessions for oil exploration, the effects of a larger income and relations with foreign governments). The third part tries to give a view of the man himself, his foibles and predilections and his family relationships."
Although Nestor retired as a geologist in 1977 (he retired from Aramco in 1955), at 95 years old, he is as busy as ever as the Associate Editor of Carnets de Géologie/Notebooks on Geology, an online geoscience journal. He translates French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese articles into English, and edits articles for foreigners writing in English. He has also produced a series of slide shows on YouTube (Rednasrotsen's Channel) covering topics of interest, including World War II and geology.
Nestor wrote an autobiography called Peregrinations of a Positivist, self-printed and bound, accompanied by an album of 300 photos taken during his travels around the world. You can read more about his life at his website, Nestor John Sander, and as one of Aramco ExPats' Featured Columnists.
Click Here to buy Ibn Saud: King by Conquest